


Summer Camp

by PoorWendy



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:49:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26309587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoorWendy/pseuds/PoorWendy
Summary: It’s been a very long day. They all are. Every one of them. 'On the job,' 'at work,' that goes without saying. Her job fills up her every day.Tony Stark’s life occupies her every waking moment.
Relationships: Happy Hogan & Pepper Potts
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	Summer Camp

The quiet surrounding Pepper Potts is deafening, and exquisite. It’s been a very long day.

They all are. Every one of them. 'On the job,' 'at work,' that goes without saying. Her job fills up her every day.

Tony Stark’s life occupies her every waking moment.

It’s a quarter to one in the morning—a time of day she could just as well be pouring a cup of coffee for herself as she could her first glass of wine. Sleep, however, is a mythic sort of fantasy.

She’s not certain that she’ll make her way home tonight. Just because Tony Stark flew into a war zone today doesn’t mean all his business isn’t still buzzing around for her to deal with.

She sighs. The wine. She fills a glass with a modest amount of chardonnay and stands at the countertop to drink it.

The clang of keys against marble. Pepper jumps and turns to see Happy dropping a briefcase and a duffel bag near the table.

“Little early in the day for that, huh, Pep?”

“Hilarious,” she mutters, though it’s not completely sarcastic. It was funny. It’s just that her heart is still thumping from being so startled.

He notices. “Sorry,” he offers, brief but genuine. “Not usually so quiet when I get in.”

She nods, and lets him by so he can open the refrigerator. “A perk of sending our boss into a war zone,” she notes, trying to make it sound a little lighter than it makes her feel to consider it.

Happy opens a beer, takes a seat at the island counter opposite her. “What, you worried about him?”

She shrugs. “I guess not. Too busy to be worried,” she adds, animatedly gesturing the wine glass in her hand.

Happy cracks a smile. “He’ll be alright. Just a few days.”

Pepper nods again. Then they both just sit for a few minutes, comfortable and quiet. At rest. What a rarity.

Eventually, Pepper speaks again, just as the thought is coming to her. “Do you ever think this is what it must be like to have kids?”

Happy tilts his head in tacit agreement. But she isn’t sure he quite gets her exact meaning.

“Like, you drag your son out of bed, try and get him to pack him to pack himself up for summer camp, end up doing it all yourself, chase him out the door with a dozen reminders of things you know will be forgotten again in half-an-hour, send him off with his father, take a single breath… And realize now you’ve still got to clean the mess in his room, call his baseball coach about the practices he’ll miss, pick up his summer reading list—” She cuts herself off, the amusement in Happy’s expression making it clear enough that she’s gone off on a proper tangent. “Sorry,” she starts. An infuriating, knee-jerk response to losing even a modicum of composure that she’s developed.

“No,” Happy says, shaking his head. “I get it. Dad drives him three hours up into the mountains, drives three hours home. House is finally quiet.” He gestures at the room around them.

Pepper nods, looks down. “And Mom’s got a bottle of wine open.”

Happy laughs. “Dad cracks a beer.” He raises his glass toward her informally. She does the same.

They’re quiet again for a few minutes. She takes another sip of her wine and wonders whether this is the closest she’ll get to that imaginary scene, or whether she’ll have a chance at something real someday. It’s uncertain. That’s the very frustrating thing. In her life, everything is certain. It’s scheduled, concrete. Even its flexibility is a given. She’s shuffled appointments, appearances, and meetings around in as much time as it takes the elevator to get to the fourth floor in the morning. But look forward, and _inward_ , well that’s an incompatible combination. She supposes it’s not _the_ future that’s uncertain. After all, Tony’s is scheduled down to the day for the next four years and seven months. But Pepper’s future, well… If it isn’t tied up with Tony’s, then it’s just the inky liquid they use to fill up Magic 8 Balls. Ask again later. Outlook bleak.

Happy clears his throat, and Pepper blinks out of her depressing train of thought. “‘Thing is,” he starts, “I think that’s when Mom and Dad usually realize they miss the kid. Y’know, one turns to the other and says how the quiet just isn’t right.”

She sighs. “It isn’t, is it?” He shakes his head. She groans. “I do miss him.”

He nods. “I do too.”

She’s grateful he doesn’t dig at her for admitting it. And that he doesn’t give her one of those grins she always seems to earn from everybody when she so much as alludes to anything moderately sentimental regarding Tony. It’s nothing new. Of course there’s been talk, ever since she started advancing within the company. Rumors, and barely veiled accusations of “hanky panky,” all due to nothing more than her being a woman and Tony being Tony.

(And that’s the truth, because all that talk began long before she and Tony developed their rapport. Long before she developed feelings for him. Which is also true—she does have feelings for him, however complex and multifaceted they might be. They’re there.)

“You know,” he begins tentatively, “—and I don’t—” he interrupts himself, clearly about to say something which he’s worried she might misconstrue. “You’re doing a really good job, Pep.”

In the middle of some busy Wednesday, it might well have set her internally raging. But quietly, here in the kitchen, with a glass of wine and a strange tide of self-doubt in her, it almost makes her eyes water. She nods. “Thanks, Happy.”

The job is her life. It’s her every moment. And over the years, since she started here at 23, she’s thought, for a thousand separate moments, of leaving. She could have left. She still could. But then, at least it’s all—all of it—what _she_ chose.

And in the end, of course, it’s Tony who keeps her there. Sure, it’s also Tony who has her mentally delivering a scathing severance speech on at least a weekly basis. But that always passes.

It isn’t that she “can’t stay mad at him.” She absolutely can. She’s managed to do so for days or weeks at a time. And it’s not just that he pays her so well, though it doesn’t hurt. The real reason is one she can’t get too close to, not even in the privacy of her own mind. It’s that Tony, her boss, the billionaire captain of industry, the actually world-famous, all-powerful Tony Stark, is her friend, and she loves him.


End file.
